Ancestry: A Personal Journey

We are all components of our nurtured pasts; our ancestry can help create a road map to where we have been that can give us insight into where we are going. Our pasts reflect our future and even in death our ancestors have many stories to share with us that will make us all the wiser in our lives. Or maybe you are just of the curious sort and you just are wondering if the family story of Great-Great Grandpa's misfortune in a Saloon is true.

Ancestry is something I have had a fascination with for a number of years. The old story of my Great-Grandfathers misguided ills with alcoholism and gambling lost us the farm, so to speak. Yep! My family lost a large farm on the shores of the Detroit River in Ontario; the family could have made millions. Instead we struggled from the moment my Great-Grandmother hit the shores of Detroit with nothing but $900 and a couple of children. The how, why, and when of her adventures were always lingering as questions in the family; so I set myself on the path to discovery and to the wonderment of genealogy.

In the case of my Great Grandparents and their exploits I first had to locate some basics. In order to accomplish this goal I was required to interview at the very least my father. After a rather lengthy phone call he had given me a great start. He had my Grand Mother's maiden name and her birth date; enough for a simple search of the web.

Surprisingly, the search gave up a link to a web site that I have found indispensible in my quest;.Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com has a comprehensive package of tools that allow you to record your information and modify items. Most importantly the moment you make a modification the system searches records for you and brings back additional results. Now not every result is correct and you will need to examine the location of the information and the details to get a comfortable match; but the system works very well.

In my case I began with my Grand Mother as the core person. A few moments later I had a match on her birth record and soon after I had found her mother. The vast amount of documents I had in just a few hours was overwhelming. I took a break and contacted my father the next morning to verify some information. Since then the every once in a while back and forth has give light to a whole grouping of persons as far back as the 1500's in France; all verifiable.

The most important factor here was my father's curiosity about his grandmother's life; since he was the youngest of twelve, he had few memories, other than the stern French speaking woman he knew had passed when he was 4. Her background and life's ups and downs were all sketchy at first, but I found if I tracked my grandmothers birth documents and registry's I was able to find neighbors and other relatives on the original documents; all available through Ancestry.com. These documents were indispensible; I was able to email copies to my father to verify signatures and soon had the very ferry ticket and log that told me everything.

She was widowed in 1907 and had listed her next of kin in Sandwich, Ontario. Her birth date, the children she brought with her, their ages, and the listed next of kin here in the states as well as back in Canada. Now the story had a break; who was her husband? I had a name but no other information. I did a search of the web again and found last known addresses which lead to land ownership and census records in the 1800's. Sure enough, I had the story, in full, and in so much undeniable detail my father and his family had to accept the results. So I called my father.

The story is my grandmother had arrived early and was staying at a family friend's bed and breakfast as a boarder and housekeeper. My Great Grandmother arrived shortly after with a child in tow; seems her husband, my Great Grand Father, had taken control of her father's farm in Ontario on the coast of the river just after her father had passed in December 1901 after getting hit by a train; A train! Yes - A train. Now, what you need to understand when you are doing this research is often you need to draw some imaginary conclusions; but outside of the reasons why, it was clear he had died a horrific death, that included suicide by train. Seems his wife was very ill and was on her way to death herself; she had been confined to bed a year earlier and died a month after her husband's unfortunate demise. I then found a transfer of ownership of the land to my grandfather and grandmother for her parents just after death.

From the passing of ownership I had learned my great grandfather was a merchant and not a farmer. It did not take very long for him to find a method to squander the family fortune and eventually succumb to the same death that had taken his father in-law. This story was later verified through records and death certificates; all available on the web.

I would recommend ancestry to anyone who has a diligence and flair for historical truths. The documenting of sources is imperative, but the vast amount available online today is wonderful and growing daily. Recently I found my father's father and we have been researching that side of the tree; a far more difficult task. Only time will tell if I can assemble something of coherence in that mayhem.

www.ancestry.com